Outline two assumptions of the Biological Approach to understanding human behaviour.

The Biological Approach to understanding human behaviour has many assumptions, two of which I will outline.

The first of these is the assumption that behaviour and thought are linked to the structure of the brain. The brain has many different areas which are responsible for different types of behaviours, and is generally split into four lobes: the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the occipital lobe. Each lobe handles a variety of different behaviours. The frontal lobe, for instance, deals with high-level thought processes and language. We can be fairly sure that these processes occur in this region due to case studies of patients who have received brain damage to this area. One particular area in the frontal lobe is Broca's area - related to the production of spoken words. Patients with damage to this area are unable to produce speech, thus we can assume that specific functions are localised to specific areas.

The second assumption is that behaviour is influenced by genetics. This means that you might be genetically predisposed to behaving in a particular way because other members of your family are, too. This also means that some psychological disorders, such as Schizophrenia, often crop up in different members of the same family. The influence of genetics on psychology has been demonstrated in twin studies - when one twin has a psychological disorder, there is a higher chance of the other twin having the same disorder than a non-twin relative. This is because twins share more genes than other members of the family.